ttered up, and as we drew nearer, the general
evidences of desolation became more apparent. The steps of the terraces
were covered with patches of brown and golden moss. The stone urns were
some of them fallen in the deep grass, and some broken. There were gaps
in the rich balustrade here and there; and the two great fountains on
either side of the lower terrace had long since ceased to fling up
their feathery columns towards the sun. In the middle of one a broken
Pan, noseless and armless, turned up a stony face of mute appeal, as if
imploring us to free him from the parasitic jungle of aquatic plants
which flourished rankly round him in the basin. In the other, a stalwart
river-god with his finger on his lip, seemed listening for the music of
those waters which now scarcely stirred amid the tangled weeds that
clustered at his feet.

Passing all these, passing also the flower-beds choked with brambles and
long waving grasses, and the once quaintly-clipped myrtle and box-trees,
all flinging out fantastic arms of later growth, we came to the upper
terrace, which was paved in curious patterns of stars and arabesques,
with stones alternately round and flat. Here a good-humored, cleanly
peasant woman came clattering out in her _sabots_ from a side-door, key
in hand, preceded us up the double flight of steps, unlocked the great
door, and admitted us.

The interior, like the front, had been modernized about a hundred and
fifty years before, and resembled a little formal Versailles or
miniature Fontainebleau. Dismantled halls paved with white marble;
panelled ante-chambers an inch deep in dust; dismal _salons_ adorned
with Renaissance arabesques and huge looking-glasses, cracked and
mildewed, and mended with pasted seams of blue paper; boudoirs with
faded Watteau panellings; corridors with painted ceilings where
mythological divinities, marvellously foreshortened on a sky-blue
ground, were seen surrounded by rose-colored Cupids and garlanded with
ribbons and flowers; innumerable bed-rooms, some containing grim
catafalques of beds with gilded cornices and funereal plumes, some
empty, some full of stored-up furniture fast going to decay--all these
in endless number we traversed, conducted by the good-tempered
_concierge_, whose heavy _sabots_ awakened ghostly echoes from floor
to floor.

At length, through an ante-chamber lined with a double file of grim old
family portraits--some so blackened with age and dust as to be total